Created by participants in the “Understanding Lincoln” open online graduate course (offered in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History), this site (still in development) features 150 of Lincoln’s “most teachable” documents and offers a full array of multi-media resources designed to help teach them in the K-12 and undergraduate classroom. This site is especially useful for Common Core alignments.

Created as part of the Lincoln Bicentennial anniversary, this site offers a snapshot of where the “Digital Lincoln” stood as of 2009, and includes a host of examples of research and presentation tools, especially designed for serious student and academic scholars.

Created in part to help transform insights from James Oakes’s prize-winning study, Freedom National (2013) into use for the modern-day classroom, this site presents an array of primary and secondary source tools for studying the complicated but fascinating subject of emancipation and abolition.

This “unofficial” guide includes access to Tony Kushner’s script, a full cast of characters (with photo comparisons to actual historical figures), and extensive analysis of the artistic license in the film and the historical reaction to Steven Spielberg’s important movie project.

The House Divided Research Engine is a Drupal-based content management system that contains over 12,000 public domain images and tens of thousands of documents and other historical records. The link above takes users directly to Abraham Lincoln’s main record page and offers a well-curated gateway for Lincoln research.

This short but compelling exhibit came together as part of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and helps visitors understand the evolution of the document, including a sharp analysis of all five manuscript versions of the address in Lincoln’s handwriting.

Dickinson College students Leah Miller and Will Nelligan helped create short but engaging tools for studying Lincoln’s most important autobiographical writing –a sketch he produced in late 1859 to help launch his presidential bid. There is a six minute YouTube video of the sketch and an annotated edition of it through the new platform at RapGenius.

Michael Burlingame’s prize-winning Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2008) is the most important new multi-volume study of Lincoln, but it is difficult to teach because it is so lengthy. With permission, however, from both the author and the publisher (Johns Hopkins University Press), we have created short visually enhanced excerpts from the work that focus on the election of 1860 and include clickable footnotes, allowing teachers and students to “see” Burlingame’s sources directly.

Created by technologist Rafael Alvarado, this mash up includes an integrated interface allowing users to see the online edition of Lincoln’s Collected Works (his known writings), Lincoln Day-By-Day (his daily schedule), and The Abraham Lincoln Papers At the Library of Congress (the bulk of his extant correspondence) for the essential “one-stop” shopping experience. There is nothing else quite like this “timemap” available on the Internet –a must-see for serious and aspiring scholars.

Last week, Professor Pinsker, Leah Miller, and I joined the top students from our “Understanding Lincoln” online course (and about 5,000 other people) at Gettysburg National Cemetery to commemorate the sesquicentennial of Lincoln’s eponymous address there. We heard from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Senator Bob Casey, Governor Tom Corbett, and others. Almost every moment of the ceremony was beautiful, and viewable for posterity on CSPAN here.

The most intriguing part of the event, however, was not even listed on the program. Justice Antonin Scalia made a surprise appearance to swear in more than a dozen new American citizens from countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Before he presided over their recitation of the oath – a strange, but moving thing itself – Justice Scalia offered a few “words of welcome to the new citizens.” Most strikingly, he noted that the concept of being “un-American” is unique to the political culture and national identity of the United States, adding that “we used to have a House Un-American Activities Committee.” That someone would use HUAC as a positive example of something, as a statement about how Americans see themselves, was jarring to me. HUAC only helped define what was “un-American” by being un-American — by intimidating and investigating citizens who held minority views.

Justice Scalia addresses the crowd gathered at Gettysburg National Cemetery as James Getty, a renowned Lincoln reenactor, looks on.

If you watch the clip, as you can above, Justice Scalia’s reference to HUAC almost sounds like an aside; a brief meandering away from a well-hewn script. Even if we agree to treat it as such, his remarks are still problematic. Justice Scalia goes on to say that there is no concept, “in French political discourse,” of being “un-French,” no concept of being un-German in Germany, etc. He points to this fact as central to what others have labeled American exceptionalism. History does not support that claim, though. Six million Jewish people were murdered for being ‘un-German,’ and Muslims and African immigrants are routinely subjected to various indignities for being ‘un-French.’ The same concept that energized HUAC has festered in other countries for decades. It is not what makes the United States – or any country – great.

The United States is strengthened, rather, by what is American. That term’s broad reach – the range of religions, nationalities, and political identities it encompasses – makes it meaningful, not meaningless. A Senator from Wisconsin does not have the power to articulate what is un-American, let alone use the term to describe a group of people or a belief that they share. The values espoused in the Constitution are bigger and broader than that. Our fundamental pluralism is hard-won, bitterly contested, and rarely straightforward or simple, but its denigration is the only truly un-American act. Perhaps this was what Abraham Lincoln had in mind when he said, “nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The present moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children as there was for my father’s.”

In the days leading up to our expert panel at Ford’s Theatre, we thought it might be useful to scan the headlines for the latest in Lincoln invocations, political or otherwise. In other words, who’s actually asking, “what would Lincoln do (WWLD)?” Just this week, Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton University who has written about everything from 19th century religious cults to the music of Bob Dylan, published an op-ed in The New York Times detailing the issues that led to the inclusion of a clause about “the public debt” in the Fourteenth Amendment. The piece is a challenge to the arguments Professor Lawrence Tribe has made for years against the Fourteenth Amendment’s purported application to the debt ceiling. Responding directly to Tribe, Wilentz writes, “these assertions…have no basis in the history of the 14th Amendment…in fact, that record clearly shows that Congress intended the amendment to prevent precisely the abuses that the current House Republicans blithely condone.”

The President has already ruled out the use of the 14th Amendment, saying “there are no magic bullets here.”

You can read Wilentz’s articulations of that history yourself. What’s important for our purposes is what he says later about Abraham Lincoln. “As Lincoln well knew,” Wilentz writes in response to Tribe’s contention that presidents lack clear authority over the debt ceiling, “the executive, in times of national crisis, can invoke emergency powers to protect the Constitution.” There is certainly plenty of material in the annals of Lincolniana ( I just discovered the term) that supports this point, not least of which is Lincoln’s decision to suspend habeas corpus. The problem with the analogy (and, to some extent, the inherent problem with analogies) is that it misses out on important contextual questions. Perhaps we can all accept that Lincoln believed in “emergency powers,” but would he have termed this moment as such? Would a national default represent the same kind of political and constitutional conflagration that the Civil War did? I find it hard to label Wilentz’s piece an ‘abuse’ of the Lincoln moniker, but his comparative lack of attention to the substance of the Lincoln/Obama, Lincoln/debt ceiling analogy does suggest that he might have been searching for one more point to bolster the broader credibility of his argument.

“What Would Lincoln Do? Understanding How Lincoln Gets Used (And Abused) in Today’s Washington” is a free public panel that will take place at Ford’s Theatre on Tuesday, October 15, 2013, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Tickets may be reserved at http://www.fords.org/event/what-would-lincoln-do. Those who cannot attend the panel, may view it online starting on the evening of October 16. Information about where to obtain access to the video will be available through http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln.

I am moderating a special panel at Ford’s Theatre on Tuesday, October 15, 2013 from 12:30pm to 1:30pm on the always relevant topic of “What Would Lincoln Do? Understanding How Lincoln Gets Used (And Abused) in Today’s Washington.” This is part of the closing phase of the “Understanding Lincoln” online course (which the House Divided Project produces with the Gilder Lehrman Institute) but it is open to anybody who wants to attend in person or watch later on Vimeo or C-SPAN. You can find out all of the details –and reserve seats- here, but this post (the first in a series about the event) is designed to more fully introduce our notable panel of experts and provide some easy access to their published opinions on these matters.

First, however, we should dispense with this shutdown business. Ford’s Theatre is closed as long as the shutdown lasts, but our panel will continue regardless. Ford’s Theatre has a new Center for Education & Leadership which is just across the street and which remains open to visitors. We can always relocate there on October 15 if the crisis does not get resolved.

Our panel is a truly remarkable collection of figures who combine both expert knowledge of Abraham Lincoln with shrewd understanding of modern-day Washington and policy-making. They include:

Michael Lind was one of the co-founders of the New America Foundation, a leading Washington DC think tank, which is co-sponsoring this event. His current policy focus is on economic growth, but he has authored several thought-provoking books on American political history, including an engaging study of Abraham Lincoln entitled, What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America’s Greatest President (Doubleday, 2005). In this work, which the New York Times called “intellectually bold” and one that “will almost certainly change the way you think about America and one of its greatest presidents,” Lind argues that Lincoln’s core conviction was democratic self-government and that he should be known first and foremost as, “the Great Democrat.” Over the years, Lind has produced numerous books that invoke Lincoln’s legacy, but for the purposes of this panel, one of the most relevant was a short piece he authored for Salon in 2009, under the headline, “How would Lincoln vote today?”, which promised to reveal “where Lincoln really stood on the issues.” The bottom line of this eminently readable (and thoroughly debatable) piece is Lind’s assertion that Lincoln “might find himself more at home among Democrats focused on technology and economic growth” (um, like folks at the New America Foundation, perhaps?) and that most emphatically, “Nobody with Lincoln’s religious and political beliefs could be a conservative Republican” today.

Richard Norton Smith might beg to disagree. Smith is one of the nation’s most prominent presidential historians. Currently a history faculty member at George Mason University and completing a biography of Nelson Rockefeller, he has been a fixture over the years on C-SPAN and PBS “Newshour,” and a widely read political biographer of diverse figures such as Thomas Dewey, Herbert Hoover, Robert McCormick and George Washington. He is also far more reluctant than Lind to identify Lincoln with either modern-day political party. Smith told PBS in 2012 during this virtual tour of the new Ford’s Theatre Center, that “everyone wants Lincoln on their side. Almost everyone can devise a rationale to justify that.” As a former director of several presidential libraries (including the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield), Smith has a uniquely rich view of how American presidents, in particular, are always “getting right with Lincoln” (a famous line that Smith often quotes from David Donald’s well-regarded 1956 essay in The Atlantic). Yet even the prudent historian sometimes finds himself invoking Lincoln or other Rushmore figures to comment on present-day political trends. Just last week, Smith offered NPR a subtle critique of President Obama’s handling of the shutdown / debt ceiling crisis by comparing him to “successful presidents”:

“Successful presidents are defined in part by their enemies, [For] Andrew Jackson, it was the Bank of the United States. [Theodore Roosevelt], it was the ‘malefactors of wealth.’ Ronald Reagan, it was the ‘evil empire.’ This president — it isn’t that he has lacked for enemies. But I think he’s been very reluctant to … play that game.”

Like Richard Norton Smith, Craig Symonds tries to embody the classic scholarly caution about applying the past the to the present. Symonds taught for years in the History Department at the US Naval Academy. In fact, Symonds was the guy whom Harrison Ford “shadowed” in 1991 while he was studying up for his role as professor / spy Jack Ryan in the “The Patriot Games.” Symonds has authored or edited more than 20 history books, mostly on the Civil War or US naval history. He won the 2009 Lincoln Prize for his book, Lincoln and His Admirals(Oxford, 2008). Yet even Professor Emeritus Symonds occasionally indulges in the inevitable “getting right with Lincoln” parlor game. When asked about leadership lessons that might be derived from Lincoln, Symonds responded pointedly during a recent interview with the Abraham Lincoln Institute at Lincoln Memorial University, that he could name three: “patience; a willingness to listen, as well as talk; and a sense of humor. Sadly, all three are sorely in need in our nation today.”

James L. Swanson does not hold a professorship, but he has published one of the most influential books on the Lincoln assassination and its aftermath, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer(Harper, 2006) and has edited or authored several historical books, including another fast-paced historical narrative coming out next month on the Kennedy assassination. Also, even more than any other member of this panel, Swanson has spent a career in and around the federal government and federal policy-making with a special focus on the Supreme Court and constitutional law. Trained as an attorney, Swanson has held positions at the US Department of Justice, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation among others. He has written frequently about partisan obstruction of judicial nominations, including this 2003 piece in The Weekly Standardwhich exorciated congressional Democrats for waging unprecedented “preemptive war” against George W. Bush nominees (apparently what was “unprecedented” in 2003 has now become the dysfunctional norm…). During an interview with Scholastic, Swanson emphasized Lincoln’s self-made qualities as a prescription for all modern-day Americans. “Lincoln once said that he was a living example of how a young person could succeed through hard work,” Swanson reported, “and he was right.”

“What Would Lincoln Do? Understanding How Lincoln Gets Used (And Abused) in Today’s Washington” is a free public panel that will take place at Ford’s Theatre on Tuesday, October 15, 2013, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Tickets may be reserved at http://www.fords.org/event/what-would-lincoln-do. Those who cannot attend the panel, may view it online starting on the evening of October 16. Information about where to obtain access to the video will be available through http://new.livestream.com/gilderlehrman/lincoln.

As readers of Blog Divided are well aware, we have been fascinated by the story of Samuel and Bayard Wilkeson, a father and son who were both at Gettysburg, one as a correspondent for the New York Times and the other as a 2LT for the Union army. The son died on the battle’s first day after being wounded by an artillery shell and after amputating his own leg. The father discovered his son’s body on July 4, 1863 following more than a day of intense searching. Then he wrote a passionate, angry account of what happened for the New York Times, which closed by resolving that the dead at Gettysburg had “baptised” with their blood, the “second birth of Freedom in America.” President Lincoln knew the Wilkesons. The story of the family’s tragedy echoed across the North during the summer of 1863. So the connection to Lincoln’s famous phase in the Gettysburg Address, “a new birth of freedom,” seemed overwhelming, intentional, and eminently teachable. We first posted about the story of the “Angry Father” in July 2010, but then followed up with more details in the summer of 2013, here and here. I spoke about the Wilkeson family during the 150th anniversary commemorations for the Battle of Gettysburg and have been featuring the story in numerous K-12 workshops during the last five years, typically through this handout.

But there’s been one nagging concern that we just have not yet been able to fully resolve. What exactly did Sam Wilkeson look like? The problem is that there are multiple images attributed to him but they don’t seem to align properly. I brought this up at the final seminar session of the “Understanding Lincoln” open, online course and asked for help, in true “class-sourcing” fashion. Remarkably, within a few hours, I got a very helpful lead from course participant Martha Bohnenberger, a social studies teacher from South Carolina.

Here is the problem that first disturbed me in the summer of 2013. The House Divided Project has been using this striking 1859 image of Sam Wilkeson (on the top left) taken by Alexander Gardner, discovered and cleaned up by project co-founder John Osborne, courtesy of the online collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Yet the Buffalo News profiled the Wilkesons this past summer because the family were Buffalo natives and they used the image on the top right –clearly not the same person– to represent Sam Wilkeson (undated, no source citation). I presume they obtained this photograph from the Buffalo History Museum, but I haven’t yet tracked it all down. By the way, Buffalo was a nineteenth-century city partly founded by the grandfather in this story, Judge Samuel Wilkeson, Sr., who had hailed from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Dickinson College is located. However, there is even more about the image to consider. The Gettysburg National Military Park features the story of the Wilkesons inside their main museum experience at the Visitor’s Center, but they use an entirely different image reportedly of newspaper correspondent Sam Wilkeson, which they credit to the National Archives (on the bottom left). Meanwhile, Martha Bohnenberger discovered this illustration (bottom right) in the New York Sun from December 3, 1889 as part of an obituary for Wilkeson –read it, he led a truly remarkable life– by doing some shrewd online research at the Library of Congress site, Chronicling America. Again, it’s different.

Sam Wilkeson (Smithsonian)

Sam Wilkeson (Buffalo News)

Sam Wilkeson (Archives)

Sam Wilkeson (New York Sun)

Now, I am not willing to bet my tenure on this, but I think that the Smithsonian Wilkeson (1859) is the same as the New York Sun Wilkeson (1889), just bearded in that latter illustration. The lines of the face, however, strike me as almost identical. But I don’t quite know what to make of the National Archives Wilkeson or the Buffalo News Wilkeson. The image quality isn’t quite good enough for me to decide, but they seem (especially the Buffalo Wilkeson) to be a different person (and probably different from each other as well). What do you think? There’s certainly more researching and phone calling to do, which I haven’t yet accomplished, but I appreciated the quick extra help from my class-sourcing exercise the other day and would like to continue to seek help if others would provide it. Feel free to comment here and leave your opinion, or contact me directly by email (pinskerm@dickinson.edu) to share any insights.

We often think or hear of the MOOC as the great equalizer of higher education, a medium to disseminate college-level education to billions, regardless of their income bracket. But recent events should lead us to reconsider this overly-optimistic perspective.

In January 2013, just after the announcement that San Jose State University planned to partner with Udacity to create open, online courses for its students, New America Foundation’s Director of Education Policy Programs, Kevin Carey, claimed, “A well-regarded public university giving credit for free or inexpensive MOOCs . . . is like a crack in an enormous dam.” According to an excited Carey, if one college began accrediting MOOCs, many would follow, which in turn would shake the world of higher education by dramatically reducing costs nationwide.

In a debate with Carey in May, Arizona State University President, Michael Crow, insisted that technology should be used to augment the traditional classroom experience, not replace it. He warned against over-reliance on MOOCs to “cure” the fast-rising costs of higher education. “The problem that I have with an overgeneralization of this lightning bolt technology,” he stated, “Is that we will find ourselves on a trajectory where the rich get face-to-face with professors and everyone else will be taught by some type of robot…the [class] separation will grow deeper.” Carey responded that the system of higher education is already “radically unfair.”

Crow is not alone in fearing that group segregation will result because of MOOCs. University of Nebraska Professor, William G. Thomas, expressed his disapproval of Thomas L. Friedman’s opinion that MOOCs were the cure for special-needs learners, claiming that simply giving them a link to an online course will segregate them from children with “normal” learning needs. “The frightening and retrograde idea that people with special needs can be set apart (to be special somewhere else) should be seen for what it is—exclusionary.” Professor Thomas is currently working on his own MOOC-like course on History Harvests, a project he helped create at Nebraska to “democratize” American history.

Meanwhile, San Jose State announced earlier in July their decision to discontinue their courses with Udacity, as students failed at alarming rates. The university plans to continue their partnership with edX, which devised courses that merely supplemented traditional, in-class learning. Reports show that less that 51% of students enrolled in the Udacity program at San Jose State passed their courses, while students enrolled in the edX hybrid program faired better even than students enrolled in traditional classes.

With the recent failure (and success) of the San Jose State experiments, it appears that Crow was wise in cautioning against the full implementation of MOOCs in place of traditional, in-class learning. If the mission of MOOC-makers is truly philanthropic, they need to consider the full consequences of their endeavors.

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning. Students and faculty at the House Divided Project at Dickinson College are collaborating this summer on a new open, online course called, “Understanding Lincoln,” taught by Prof. Matthew Pinsker and covering ways to teach Abraham Lincoln’s legacy using close readings of his most important writings. This new type of online course represents a unique partnership between Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The course is available for both graduate credit and free participation. Registration for the course closes on Friday, July 19, 2013. For more information, go to https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course.

MOOCs are supposed to be free, but it appears that for universities and professors, that is hardly the case. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have so far proven to be a huge financial commitment for institutions and according to recent studies, the preparation can be very time consuming for the educators who build them.

Financial Commitment

The Chronicle of Higher Educationhas been reporting that MOOCs have been quite expensive for universities. MOOC provider EdX apparently charges $250,000 per course, and then another $50,000 every time the course is offered (April 29, 2013). EdX also keeps part of the revenue generated by the profits of each course. To use the “Coursera platform”, another MOOC provider, The New York Times reported that universities would have to pay $8 per student enrolled, and $30-$60 per student to use content developed at a different school (May 30, 2013). In a class of 1,000+ students, those numbers really add up. Such prices show that creating a MOOC is a large and risky investment for any educational institution. As a result, many people, such as writer for The Chronicle of Higher EducationJason Mittell, believe that these investments will only be possible for elite institutions.

Time/Labor Commitment

On March 20, 2013, an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a survey taken by MOOC professors. In the survey, the vast majority of these professors expressed how teaching a MOOC “took a lot out of them.” Most spent over one-hundred hours on the project before it even started, and devoted 8-10 hours to running it during the week. Duke University professor Cathy Davidson has been blogging about her own preparation for teaching an online course. She says that the time and labor involved is so great, that she doubts how any professor would “be crazy enough to do this”, let alone for free. Although she gets paid a $10,000 stipend for the course, Davidson says that all of it is being used for “teaching assistants, technical assistants, and equipment.”

While many are jumping on the MOOC bandwagon now because it’s new and exciting, these commitments may cause it to get old in a hurry. With such high costs in money, time, and labor, it appears that MOOCs may not be worth the effort or risk. Universities must be willing to pay both for the course itself, and a higher compensation for the professors that teach them. Without this, the much talked about “MOOC revolution” will become nothing more than a moment in history.

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning in the field of history funded by the Mellon Digital Humanties grant. Students and faculty at the House Divided Project at Dickinson College are collaborating this summer on a new open, online course called, “Understanding Lincoln,” taught by Prof. Matthew Pinsker and covering ways to teach Abraham Lincoln’s legacy using close readings of his most important writings. This new type of online course represents a unique partnership between Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The course is available for both graduate credit and free participation. Registration for the course closes on Friday, July 19, 2013. For more information, go to https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course

The first day of class—most people know what that experience is like: Nerves—Am I in the right place?—Excitement—I’ve heard this professor is really good—Curiosity—Who are these people sitting around me?

As an undergraduate student of European History at Dickinson, I’ve only ever had Professor Pinsker once, for a methods course which met once a week for a three-hour period. I had heard from the upperclassmen that he was an intimidating professor, one of those who forced you to really defend and question your opinions. Both excited and nervous, I arrived over ten minutes early with all the course materials in my book bag and the reading printed out. As my classmates trickled in, I recognized some of them and made immediate judgements about the others. One or two people were conversing with each other but no one tried to start a conversation with the entire class. At five past, the Professor walked in, sat down between two students (we were in a seminar-style classroom), and introduced himself. We did what you usually would on the first day of class: review the syllabus, discuss the course aims, and ask a few questions before being dismissed early. It was what every student expects from their first day of class.

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend another first class led by Professor Pinsker, but this time, it was very different. Yesterday was the launch of our online course, Understanding Lincoln, and I virtually attended the first online seminar via Adobe Connect. It ran from 7-9pm EST and was exclusively for the graduate-level students who had paid to take the course (though the free participants were able to watch a half hour after its conclusion). I will admit, I was a bit skeptical going in. I didn’t think it would be at all comparable to a traditional classroom, having participated in other MOOCs and finding it not that compelling to watch a professor lecture on a screen.

Well, I was right, and I was wrong. It certainly wasn’t a traditional classroom, but it was surprisingly engaging. I entered the “classroom” three minutes late, having had computer difficulties, but no one noticed. The flexibility of the program allowed participants to come and go as they needed to, and up to 70 students were present by the end of the session. The setup included a shared screen with the professor, a live feed of him at a lectern, and a chat window where participants could ask questions and comment on what the professor was saying. Although the professor couldn’t read them, Gilder-Lehrman’s Education Coordinator, Lance Warren, moderated the chat box and communicated the best ones to him.

Although it was by no means a traditional classroom, I was intrigued to find that there were some key overlaps. Even though I couldn’t see my fellow students, I still found myself curious about who they were and where they were from. I kept making judgements about their personalities. Kory L. reminded me of an awesome high school teacher I had, while James G. was obviously a snarky Lincoln-skeptic. I could tell when participants were excited to talk or nervous to ask questions, just like on the first day of class. What’s more, Adobe had a “Raise Your Hand” feature, where a participant could ask a question of the professor directly. Clicking that button would put them in a queue, which Lance would access and enable their mics. Aside from the technical difficulties some participants experienced, it was very much like asking questions in a traditional classroom, and I think that alone could be said to have revolutionized the online lecture.

There were a few adjustments that could be made. For one, I’d prefer the live feed of the professor to be larger. Some of the time I felt distracted by other things on screen, and I found I was able to pay more attention when I was watching him speak. If he can’t adjust the size of the video, he might try to do more interactive things with the shared-screen as he lectures, especially bringing up text as he reads it. And while I do feel that the live chat was a great tool, I would suggest encouraging students to utilize the private chat more for trivial comments. I assume that will happen more often as participants get to “know” each other, but last night some of the comments were more distracting than helpful.

I know the question on everybody’s minds is how online learning might change or negate the traditional classroom. Already, from my experience yesterday, I can see the possibilities of utilizing social media sites like Twitter to replicate the live chat in the online seminar. I really appreciated this feature because it encouraged the meeker students to pose their questions, without physically having to speak up. A greater diversity of voices were heard and intellectual conversation flourished.

Overall, I thought it was a great experience, better than I had hoped for. The chat box and the ability of the participants to ask direct questions really underscored the objective of this online course—to have participants collaborate to create a project that is useful to others outside of the course, to expand Lincoln’s legacy using the legacies of present-day scholars.

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning. Students and faculty at the House Divided Project at Dickinson College are collaborating this summer on a new open, online course called, “Understanding Lincoln,” taught by Prof. Matthew Pinsker and covering ways to teach Abraham Lincoln’s legacy using close readings of his most important writings. This new type of online course represents a unique partnership between Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The course is available for both graduate credit and free participation. Registration for the course closes on Friday, July 19, 2013. For more information, go to https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course.

As Massive Open Online Courses continue to gain popularity and media coverage, much of the focus has been on learning online vs. learning in a classroom. However, just as important as learning itself, is how to evaluate the learning. For most MOOCs, this comes in the form of tests and quizzes. The problem presents itself mainly in humanities courses, where Professors are simply unable to grade written assignments for all the students enrolled. As a result, MOOC providers such as Coursera and EdX have developed new techniques to help solve this problem.

Getting Creative

In an article written in The New York Times on November 2, 2012, writer Laura Pappano gives a general overview on MOOCs, and the questions surrounding their validity as educational classes. One of the biggest concerns that she addresses in her article titled “The Year of the MOOC” is how assignments are graded. While multiple choice and true/false questions are standard for computer grading, written assignments force professors to “get creative.” She continues to explain how Coursera has developed the process of “peer grading” in order meet these needs. This works by making an individual grade the paper of five peers, before seeing feedback for their own work (which will have been graded by five people). Pappano adds that Coursera is also in the process of developing software to help eliminate the “bad graders”. By comparing the scores of all five peers, Coursera will be able to flag people who grade inaccurately, and will therefore “give their assessment less weight.”

Colorado State University Professor (and former MOOC student) Jonathan Rees wrote an article on March 5, 2013 in which he expressed his disapproval. He says in his article titled “Peer Grading Can’t Work“, that while peers often grade accurately, it is the comments that truly matter, and are unfortunately often sub-par. He stresses how learning from mistakes on tests are fundamental in college education, and is unsure whether MOOCs can deliver helpful responses. Rees states that this will not impact those taking MOOCs simply for expanded knowledge, but “its victims will be the future students who take MOOCs to earn college credit.” To him, these students will be deprived of the necessary instruction on writing, argument forming, and the appreciation of literature that are necessary for success.

Instant Feedback

On April 4, 2013, John Markoff wrote an article for The New York Times titled “Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break“, which explains how MOOC provider EdX has created new artificial intelligence software that grades written assignments instantly. According to Markoff’s report on research done in this area, the quality of these grades are “similar to the variation you find from instructor to instructor.” However, Markoff also explains how many people, such as MIT researcher Les Perelman, criticize the effectiveness of the software, and can often fool it with “nonsense essays” that somehow receive “high marks.” Perelman also started a petition against the program (now up to 2,000 signatures), in which they claim that computers are unable to detect many of the essentials that compose good written communication. Despite this, Markoff ends his article optimistically, referencing University of Akron in Ohio professor Mark D. Shermis and saying “In his view, the technology — though imperfect — has a place in educational settings.”

Both of these articles show that while the ability of MOOCs to accurately grade papers is still developing, it may be on the rise. Although they are likely to remain imperfect, will MOOC grading nonetheless one day become effective? Or, will the absence of Professors in this vital area create a hole that will eventually sink the entire ship?

This post is part of a series on “Making History Online” that involves an examination of open online learning in the field of history funded by the Mellon Digital Humanties grant. Students and faculty at the House Divided Project at Dickinson College are collaborating this summer on a new open, online course called, “Understanding Lincoln,” taught by Prof. Matthew Pinsker and covering ways to teach Abraham Lincoln’s legacy using close readings of his most important writings. This new type of online course represents a unique partnership between Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The course is available for both graduate credit and free participation. Registration for the course closes on Friday, July 19, 2013. For more information, go to https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-exhibitions/understanding-lincoln-graduate-course